The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-05-05
FAUST AND HAMLET.

| touiC OilEiu. uo play virgins Oh Inc ElfZaOetn-
an age adopted legends, histories and novels to
the stage with as little alteration as would fit
them to English times and people. If the sub
| ject was popular the plays were rewritten again
and again by the pen of him nearest at home
most capable of the work. Some of these
| plays were re-east over and over, and the longer
they kept the stage the more they changed
from the old myth or story that gave them birth.
But Shakespeare ard Ben johnson, Beaumont
and Fletcher. only did as all poets and drama
fists have done. The primal poetical material is
! limited; there is, after all, but nature and man.
| What appeals in literature and what is lasting
| comes from the heart of man and the soul of
| nature; it is the common bond that
! unites poet and people in COM
! mon sentiment and common utterance
! Thus. Christopher Marlowe took up the Faust
mythos, old as anything German. Skeptical
and tainted with atheism, Marlowe found in
Faust delectable food, and busted himself with
specuations that the rottenest part of the
fruit that fell from the tree of knowledge. Here
it rested, almost useless to the world as
before, until Goethe. hundred handed, Argus
eyed, 1.-THE head and body of the German nation
and the soul of his country" took il up. worked
on it for nearly three-quarters of century and
the old legend lowered and fruited into the
poem that some put one Of the three great
works of literature, Hamlet" and the ''Iliad"
being the other two.
And what is this Faust that stards SO
high? An old Teutonic myth worked over
until it became the tragedy of civilization.
1t is, too. the best explanation of the devil and
his workings in the heart of man to be found in
lteratur e-paralleled, at least. only by the devil
of the book of job This shadowy hobgoblin
that fraternized SO kindly with the ancient
-. -. ~.
Goods minister, laboring for some good by you
not understood" and defined himself to the
German student as destruction destroying de-
struction-
Part of that power not understood,
Which, while it deviseth evil, doeth good
this devil Goethe robbed Of hoofs, tail and
horns. and all his Hydrologic gear, and showed
that he never more than mans intellecs
serving mans senses. He became common and
modern, walked in Heidelberg and Vienna. and,
under the name of Mephistopheles en-
tered the and vrtueus home of
Margaret and destroyed its every member.
Emerson says tina. 1.-The Faust Of Goethe is the
philosophy of literature set in poetry; the work
of one who found himself the master of histories
mythologies. PHILOSOPHERS, sciences and national
literatures-the master of them in the encyclo-
paedial manner in which modern eruditiop, with
its International intercourse of the whole earths
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. into Indian, Etruscan,
and ali Cyclopean arts, geology, chemistry,
astronomy-is master. Under his hand each of
these Kingdoms assumed certain aerial and
poetic character. and his reflective and critical
wisdom made Faust the flower of the present
time In its superior intelligence, the past and
the present ages, their religions. politics. and
modes of thinking, dissolved into archetypes
and ideas"
The Faust of Goethe is greater than the Faust
of Marlowe as Goethe was greater than Mar
lowe Goethe knew ALL imagined all; the world
past, present and to come seemed ever with him.
The First Part, the work of his earlier ife the
base of the opera, and the only Faust known to
most readers, is broken and rugged, the product
Of different PERIODS scattered through forty
years The Second PART the Helena. which
Emerson exrols in the quotation above, was
written in Goethes old age, past seventy. It is
the product of single period, and after life had
given him all its experlef.e. Grand and peauti-
full he lay even in death. SO Eckermann tells u.s.
the perfection of physical manhood. There
senle weakness about him, but rather senile
vigor. None knew better all the phases of
European legend; Teutonic, Greek and Chris
tian were all one to him in his knowledge of
them He poured them all into the mold of the
old Faust legend. and SO it reflects more per-
fectly than any other single work in literature
the total range of human culture
The myth of Faustus was but the vehicle of
Goethes thought. All things in nature write
their thought-animal, sea, glacier. river. We
read the record of the earth backward. and call
it geology; the record Of man, and call it history
for he. too reports himself. All men do it: all
say their message. There is no close commun- 1
ion. solitary life there never was. Robinson
Crusoe wrote book, and If man were dropped
again the distant islands of the sea, his first
effort would be to make record. The man
talks to his neighbour; the stories are
repeated in the family; some preach, some lee
ture. some write. Day unto day uttereth speech;
there is voice or language where their sound
is not heard. Nor do the things talked and
written about much differ; the trivial things,
food, ard shelter, and clothing and gas and the
weather, that has do with these. The hopes
and aspirations of men and of all men are essen
TALLY the the difference is of degree it is
not of kind. Elsewise what would Shakespeare
or Goethe. what would Hamlet or Faust be
to mani There is child of any so low and
humble but what communion and education in
score of years may bring to a knowledge and ap
probation of what Isaiah and ST Paul what Virgil
and Dante, what Shakespeare, and Goethe, and
Hugo meant and said. What they reported was
not for the few. esoteric, but was ex-
oteric, and for everybody and for all time, and
hence its worth. Poets only the voices of
the multitude, easily and plainly saying that
which shines for utterance through rude and
stammering organs AS soon as the poet
speaks. the thought is. theirs-ther very
thought, and belief. and conviction. 1t is what
the old myths were trying to say. Goethe and
Shakespeare made them give up their meaning,
while retaining their ancient shapes.
The poets have always worked with the ma ma
common things, the earth as it was
where they lived the people they
found them. the social state, the systems,
the mother tongue known to every child, the in
stitutions of their day and times. The older the
myth or story. and the better ae people know
it. and the more reason the dramatist should
seize upon it. Hence, Goethe took the Faust |
myth an Shakespeare any history. myth or |
story or old drama that came to his hand for
the warp and wool into which to weave his
thought.
Shakespeare did as all the Elizabethan dra-
matists did. only he brought the crude Italian |
tales the Danish Saeas, the early English his |
tories, to perfection, and made them overtop |
themselves. All literary work that is of any |
use to the masses comes in this way; it Is part |
and parcel OF them.
Nor do the poets always know what they are
doing and accomplishing If Shakespeare did